(Photo: Athlos NYC)
2. Lotte Kopecky wins world championship 🚲
And now she says she'll be at Gravel Worlds next...!
On a rainy day in Zurich, Kopecky 🇧🇪 became the first rider to win back-to-back women's road world championship titles since Marianne Vos back in 2012-2013. Although Kopecky struggled to respond to attacks from the Dutch team and Demi Vollering, the Belgian was ultimately able to fight her way back and jump to the front in the six-woman sprint for the finish.
A silver medal for Chloe Dygert 🇺🇸, who also had to battle back into the group all day, marked a triumphant return for her from the crippling injury she suffered in a 2020 crash.
WATCH: World Championship race highlights
💜 RIP: The juniors race, however, was devastated by the death of 18-year-old Swiss rider Muriel Furrer after a crash — which is now raising questions about safety in the peloton and being investigated by police
UCI Gravel World Championship
Up next: The last official world championship of the cycling season is the UCI Gravel World Championship this upcoming weekend in Flanders, Belgium.
Although road world champion Kopecky has never raced gravel, she plans to give it a go! Some of the U.S. riders, however, are opting out due to a lack of support. But we should still see the big European names 🚲 🚲 Will last year's gravel world champ and this year's Tour de France Femmes champ Kasia Niewiadoma repeat?
3. WNBA reckons with racist taunts and concerns over reporters' questions
As the women's basketball league has exploded in popularity this year — bringing in new (and sometimes uninformed) fans and media coverage — it's also been grappling with some of the underlying tensions coming with those new crowds.
What that means is there's been a lot of angry commentary all season that:
depicts predominantly Black players as "picking on" Caitlin Clark
argues those players (who are, again, predominantly Black) are bigger and more aggressive and bullying Clark — despite evidence that rookies have long had this experience when starting in the league
suggests Clark (who is white) is here to "save" women's basketball and that the other players should be "grateful" to her
Many of these taunts, arguments, takes, and even harassment have gone from having racial undertones to being outright racist in the stands or outside of games. Which WNBA Commissioner Cathy Englebert was asked about and then criticized for her lukewarm response.
What happened now?
All of this has come to a head during the start of the WNBA playoffs. During an Indiana Fever v. Connecticut Sun game, long-time WNBA attendees found that the environment had notably changed and the atmosphere was hostile to a fan base that has historically been heavily queer and people of color.
"It’s not fair that the media and a segment of her fan base are forcing Clark to be an avatar for white supremacy, but she’s going to have to actively push back. If her Black colleagues are being affected by the racism and misogynoir and she chooses silence, she’s choosing to take advantage of the fact that she can check out of dealing with it while they can’t."
This was then followed by an unprecedented statement from the WNBA Players Association arguing that a USA Today reporter should have her credentials revoked for her unprofessional questions and Clark-pushing agenda.
The statement was prompted by questions to DiJonai Carrington (who was named the season's Most Improved Player) suggesting that she deliberately poked Clark in the eye and then celebrated the hit. But, as has been pointed out, the players' statement was really about the ongoing slanted coverage all season.
How does the league deal with this moving forward?
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